Our team identified 12 points (distinct regions) on both skulls to make direct comparison between the endocasts of the living Australian lungfish Neoceratodus and our fossil Rhinodipterus. The results are published this week in the Royal Society Open Science journal.

Using custom software, we warped the modern lungfish brain and squeezed it to fit inside the fossil lungfish endocast. In the process, we maintained the same spatial relationship between the brain and endocast in the living lungfish, and then applied this 3-D data to the fossil.